


Grab An End (pull hard and make a wish...)

by Nevcolleil



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 07:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13585632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: It didn't begin with Newt the way it began with Teresa.It was too... quiet to question. No. Quiet isn't the word. It was too... natural. He felt it too easily.And then, like it had been with remembering his name during his fight with Gally (one moment Thomas was just 'Greenie', and the next he became 'Thomas')... one day Thomas loved Newt. And the next day helovedhim.





	Grab An End (pull hard and make a wish...)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Richard Siken's "Wishbone"

It didn't begin with Newt the way it began with Teresa.

It wasn't this thing that started at the back of Thomas's brain, like a word at the tip of his tongue, that would slip away whenever he tried to sound it out for himself. It didn't nag at him like an itch that couldn't be scratched. Before Thomas knew what he felt, he never once questioned whether or not he was feeling it.

It was too... quiet to question. 

No. Quiet isn't the word. It was too... natural. He felt it too easily.

Before Alby told him, Thomas didn't know the word for the place where the box had brought him, but he knew that 'up' meant up and 'down' meant down. That 'no' means the opposite of 'yes', and that if he moves really fast, that's what it is to 'run'. Just the same, before he knew what he felt for Newt, Thomas knew that he could count on him; that he cared what Newt thought, what Newt did - what Newt thought about what _he_ did - maybe more than he cared for the approval of any of the others. Thomas knew that having Newt with him was important. That his heart beat too fast whenever Newt was in danger, and sometimes when Newt was near and there was no danger at all.

And then, like it had been with remembering his name during his fight with Gally... (one moment he was just 'Greenie', and then suddenly he was 'Thomas') one day Thomas loved Newt the way he loves Minho - just a little more than he loves all of the other Gladers. And the next day he _loved_ Newt. The way he was beginning to love Brenda; the way he could never quite decide whether or not he loved Teresa.

' _Thomas, I love you...,_ ' Thomas remembers someone - his mother(?) - saying to him with the sound of truth in her voice. That name: _love_...

It's never felt truer for Thomas than it has when he's used it to define what he feels for Newt.

When Minho gives Thomas Newt's necklace and Thomas finds the letter, he reads it again and again... and again. He presses his fingers to the ink looping to form each word, like he can learn more from the feel of them beneath his fingertips. But all he feels is the paper itself and his own hands shaking, until he has to tuck the letter away again so he doesn't rip it without meaning to.

Thomas doesn't know when Newt defined the things he felt for Thomas. The letter doesn't say - only makes it clear that he _did_ feel them. He had to have. ("... _I would follow you anywhere, and I have_...")

Newt had to have loved Thomas back. 

He said, " _Minho is all that matters_ ," when he was sick and dying. And he never heard Thomas scream back, 'You matter _too_! You matter just as much!' The words always stuck in Thomas's throat. They'd had to get to Minho - they'd _had_ to. Thomas told himself, when the words wouldn't come, that he'd make it clear to Newt after that they had to save him too... That getting the serum was always just as necessary, because it was for _him_.

But they didn't get an after.

And still, Newt begged- He begged Thomas to kill him, tried to pull the trigger himself, rather than risk hurting Thomas.

He had to have loved Thomas to write " _You deserve to be happy_ " in his letter, even thinking that Thomas was just going to let him die - just like that.

Newt obviously hadn't realized that _he_ made Thomas happy. That them, together - whatever way they could be together - was how Thomas pictured what happy would be like once they were free and safe.

That if he died- If Thomas killed him... If he killed himself-

Thomas spends his first conscious days in the Refuge doing little more than not being dead. He doesn't try to leave the hut where he's been nursed back to health, his gunshot wound cleaned and bandaged and his bleeding stopped; the resulting infection cured before it could do any more than disturb the lengthy sleep that would have accompanied his recovery from bloodloss either way.

He's said little to Vince or to Minho, to Brenda or Jorge, or Frypan or Aris. Even Gally sat at his bedside at some point, Thomas is certain, saying no more to Thomas than Thomas could say to him. (And Thomas would never have believed it if someone had told him that Gally's presence could be an actual comfort.)He doesn't speak at all to his other visitors, until finally Minho makes them stop coming. 

And Thomas mourns. No one pressures him to say or do more, not at first, and Thomas takes advantage of that. Before Minho gives him the necklace, Thomas quietly mourns and physically heals. After he has the letter... he doesn't mourn so quietly. 

But either way-

Happy? Thomas isn't ready to be that. Can't imagine that he will ever be honestly _happy_ with having reached this sanctuary, after all they had to sacrifice to get here, even if half his tears each day are of thanks that he can hear Minho's laughter, from time to time, outside the thin walls of his hut. He can hear the others enjoying the water he can hear breaking against a shore in the near distance.

Every time Thomas closes his eyes, he feels the hilt of a knife in his blood-slick hands. He hears Newt saying his name the way only he ever said it. ( " _Please, Tommy_..." ) Thomas is standing again in a war torn city, with Newt pressed as tightly against him as Thomas has ever wished he could be.

Except when he pulls back, there's that knife between them - jutting out of Newt's stomach - a thing of nightmares, not wishes. And Newt is answering Thomas's "No... please, no, Newt..." with bloody lips and grateful eyes and a quiet, "Thank you, Tommy... "

Loving Newt didn't begin, for Thomas, the way loving Teresa had.

And even if it ended just the same...it didn't stop.

It hasn't stopped.

'On second thought,' Thomas thinks to himself the first night, 'maybe Newt was right.' He can't _not_ be happy to have kept something of his friend. To still feel these feelings that are as much a part of who Thomas is now as the scars on his body. Even if they hurt him now - worse than any scar.

'No,' Thomas thinks. 'Especially then...'

Because if that's his definition of 'happy' - and only then - then Thomas can agree with Newt.

'Happy' may be exactly what he deserves.


End file.
